I first encountered David Hockney around 1964. I was about 20 at the time and working in London as a librarian at Thomas Agnew and Sons, a distinguished old master dealer to the British aristocracy. Walking to the gallery on Bond Street one day, I came to John Kasmin’s gallery where, alongside contemporary North American art, I first saw David’s work.
It was great to see these figurative paintings in the context of the abstract paintings by Frank Stella, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis that were usually on show there. They were about real life.
In the early ’60s, David was beginning to become famous, not just for his painting, but as a personality. The now-little-known artist Patrick Procktor was a contemporary of David’s, and in those days, as far as the gay subculture and Pop Art were concerned, nobody knew who was more significant. But now we do.
In 1971, a friend introduced me to David personally at a dinner at what I think was the first or second night of London’s Hard Rock Café, a franchise that would subsequently sweep the world. We soon became friends of sorts, often mixing in the circle of Derek Jarman, a painter who became principally a filmmaker because David so dominated the territory of painting.
In 1977, when I became the exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy of Arts, David was not yet a member. The Royal Academy was founded in 1768 as an artists’ society, and since the 19th century it has staged loan exhibitions in its magnificent central London galleries. It also stages an annual Summer Exhibition to show the work of its members and others chosen via submission.
